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| The Expanse |
As I mentioned in "Review Bonanza, Part One" I haven't been blogging quite as regularly in the last few months, so there are a lot of things I've meant to review that have sadly gone unreviewed on this blog. In Part One I reviewed movies (Annihilation and The Laplace's Demon), fiction (River of Teeth), and non-fiction (The Island of Knowledge and Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy).
This time I've got two TV shows (The Expanse and The X-Files), two novels (Infomocracy and Navigators of Dune), and one work of non-fiction (What the Buddha Taught). I even have a few more for Part Three, so stay tuned! And despite my antipathy toward the superhero genre, I've also seen a few recent Marvel movies (Black Panther, Infinity War, and Deadpool 2), which I've decided to review in a separate Marvel Round Up post coming soon.
The Expanse
I've read the first two novels in the series upon which the show is based, so I was excited to check out the TV series (see my reviews of the novels here and here). I only stopped reading the novels because James S. A. Corey (the team pseudonym of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) keeps cranking them out an unreasonable pace and I can't keep up. I've been watching the series on Amazon, so I've also (perhaps appropriately enough) only seen the first two seasons. And the big recent news, of course, is that Syfy has canceled The Expanse. If you want to save it, check out this campaign.
I hope The Expanse gets picked up elsewhere, because it's one of the best science fiction shows out there.
My first impression of the first season was that everyone was far prettier than I had imagined them in the books. The guy who plays Holden (Steven Strait) is an actual former model and the rest of the cast might as well be. Shohreh Aghdashloo (who plays my favorite character Avasarala) has to have one of the sexiest voices in the solar system.
As if the cast isn't beautiful enough, the production values are high enough quality to make this one of the best looking shows out there. The scenes in space, on future Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt are simply beautiful. If you like outer space and imagined future worlds, you could get a lot out of The Expanse even without listening the any of the dialogue.
But if you do listen to the dialogue, you'll be treated to an intricate, engaging plot about three centers of power in the solar system in the 23rd century: Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt. My main criticism of the first season is that I thought it was a bit slow to explain the basic elements of the plot. All that mystery keeps hard core fans intrigued, but it can turn away more casual viewers. Even having read some of the books, I found the first season a bit hard to follow at times. While I think The Expanse is a show well worth saving, I understand why it might not be picking up the kind of viewer numbers Syfy wanted. It's all a bit much to take in for all but the most discerning science fiction fans. The second season remedied this problem for the most part, but I fear the show may have lost viewers while they were waiting to have things explained.
The best thing the TV version did, though, was to put Avasarala in from episode one. She doesn't show up until the second book, but when she does, she steals the show. She's a foul-mouthed, sari-wearing, hard as steel old Indian lady who basically runs the UN, and by extension, Earth (Aghdashloo is Iranian, not Indian, but she's awesome in the role). I'm honestly a little disappointed in both the books and the TV series that Miller and Holden are the main characters, because as cool as they are, they're a bit plain compared to some of the others.
The core mystery and the political intrigue take awhile to get off the ground. It's hard to keep track of who's who and what's what. The TV show could've done with a few fewer factions in the belt, for instance. It didn't really come together for me until season two. And then we also meet another of my favorite characters, Bobbie the Martian space marine. I'll be interested to see what they do in season three.
So my advice to whomever might pick up The Expanse for season four: foreground enough of the plot for casual viewers to have a basic handle on things, but keep enough details in reserve for the hardcore fans.
The deeper philosophical issue with The Expanse (both the novels and the TV series) has to do with what kind of future we want versus what we might get. The Expanse is not Star Trek. Humanity has spaceships and has colonized the solar system, but rampant inequality, violence, and starvation are still with us (at least in the belt; things are better on Earth and Mars). Star Trek is the future I want for humanity, but The Expanse is probably closer to what we'll get, at least extrapolating from the last few thousand years of human history. All that grittiness and grimdark is, I suppose, par for the course in entertainment these days, but I do wonder where the show might be heading (I suppose I could find out if I ever finish the books, or if someone else picks up the show). Is there hope for humanity after all? Are there already reasons for hope on Earth and Mars, such as with Earth's guaranteed income and Mars's (somewhat militaristic) communitarianism? Is human suffering the toll we pay for expansion and exploration? Who decides which humans pay that toll, and could it ever be decided fairly? Let's hope The Expanse is given a chance to expand on these questions.
The X-Files
I've been a fan of The X-Files since it first aired in 1993. I even reviewed it for my high school newspaper at the time, so I suppose this review creates a nice symmetry for my relationship with the show now that it has (probably, problematically) come to its final end.
Like most fans, I thought the show had come to an end in 2002, but then there was a 2008 movie followed by a miraculous television rebirth in 2016. I thought the 2016 reincarnation was mostly fine to mediocre, although the episode "Mulder and Scully Meet the Weremonster" is honestly one of my all-time favorite episodes along with the 1996 episode "José Chung's From Outer Space" (an episode I used to show in my Critical Thinking course to discuss issues with eyewitness testimony). Both episodes were written by Darin Morgan, so perhaps my love is no coincidence.
So how did the 2018 re-rebirth fare? Like the 2016 incarnation, it was mostly okay. I've honestly never really loved the "mythology" episodes that try to tell a long-form story about aliens infecting us with their aliens diseases for some nefarious reasons with inexplicable help from the likes of the Cigarette Smoking Man. I've always preferred the stand-alone monster-of-the-week episodes, especially the funny ones.
The 2018 mythology episodes are okay for the most part, although what they do to Scully is, as Gillian Anderson herself might agree, just ... bad. Like, almost series-ruiningly bad. I don't want to spoil it (you can read spoilers here if you want), but if a future incarnation did more of the same, I'm not sure I would watch it. Okay, who am I kidding? I would watch more of The X-Files, although with great trepidation.
What saves the 2018 incarnation for me is another Darin Morgan episode, "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat," an episode that directly takes on the questions like: What fun can The X-Files be in our current Trumpian era? Now that reality itself is so weird, does The X-Files work at all as anything other than a tired, nostalgic curiosity?
Back in the 90's conspiracy theories were secret, underground affairs that were fun to entertain even if (perhaps entirely because) you didn't actually believe them. In 2018, conspiracy theories are tweeted by a former reality TV star who inhabits the highest office in the land and widely circulated by mainstream media sources that rail against "the mainstream media" (abbreviated MSM for extra points). Nobody seems to agree what's "fake news" and what's real news. Some people deny that there's any such thing as truth. All news is fake news. It's as if Fox sent the writers of The X-Files across the hall to Fox News to write news copy rather than science fiction scripts.
Enter "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat" and its treatment of the Mandela Effect (or was it the Mengele Effect?): a name for a type of misremembering of past events. Not only does it touch on some of the same issues of memory as discussed in "José Chung's From Outer Space," it coins the concept of "phony fake news," or telling the truth openly in a way so that nobody will be sure if they should believe it or not amongst all the crap out there. The episode is also hilarious (my favorite gag is Mulder's repeated insistence that everything could be explained by parallel universes and that this is backed up by science). There's even a dig at mindless nostalgia at the very end of the episode as Scully refuses to eat a type of gelatin dessert she remembers from her childhood, saying "I want to remember the way it was" (perhaps a subtle self-criticism of the show itself?). You can find a thorough plot summary here.
Back in the 90's there was, if I remember correctly, an optimism that the internet and other information technologies would bring about a new age of transparency, freedom, and equality. But we failed to see that inundating the world with information is far cry from helping us get at the truth or developing wisdom. We're drowning in information and starving for wisdom. We've mistaken freedom to believe what you want with freedom to make reality what you want it to be.
I like to call the correspondence theory of truth the "the truth is out there" theory of truth (not that I necessarily fully endorse all aspects of this theory ... stand down, philosophers!). Sadly these days, I worry more and more that people, especially young people like my students, won't get the reference to The X-Files. Even more, I worry we've lost the idea of a deeper philosophical attitude that, however elusive it might be, there is a truth out there to find.
Infomocracy by Malka Older
It took awhile to get into Infomocracy by Malka Older, but once I did, I enjoyed it as one of the more interesting works of political science fiction I've read in awhile, somewhere in a neighborhood adjacent to Ada Palmer or Kim Stanley Robinson. I can't say I ever completely figured out what each of the parties stood for or how the world switched to micro-democracy, but that's not really the focus here. One of the blurbs compares it to The West Wing, which is pretty apt, since most of the drama is centered on political intrigue at the level of mid-level crisis-manager types rather than the upper level leaders. I recommend this for policy wonks who want to wonk out on science fictional policies.
In the novel, nation-states are a thing of the past and instead everyone is a member of a centenal - a group of 100,000 people, a system called "micro-democracy." Is micro-democracy a good idea? Would this increase political participation and representation? What are the benefits and dangers of letting behemoth corporations control the flow and creation of information? Just some of the fun questions to think about with this novel.
I meant to write a fuller review, but never got around to it. This is a good novel, but maybe it just wasn't quite my thing. Still, I recommend checking it out if it sounds like it might be your type of thing.
See my Goodreads review.
Navigators of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
First things first: Navigators of Dune is a third book in a trilogy following Sisterhood of Dune and Mentats of Dune, so don't read it if you're a Dune fan thinking it's a standalone book about the Guild Navigators. In fact, the whole trilogy is called "Schools of Dune," and each book discusses the Navigators, the Sisterhood, and the Mentats. The naming conventions are a bit misleading (maybe for marketing reasons?), since this is a trilogy that's focused as much on imperial/great house intrigue as it is on the formation of the schools. ...
Second things second: this is a "McDune" book; that is, one of the latter day Dune books written by Frank Herbert's son, Brian, and Kevin J. Anderson. Even people who like the McDune books have to admit they're pretty different than Frank Herbert's originals, and most people (including me) think they're a much lower in quality, especially in terms of characterization, writing style, and philosophical depth. But as I noted in my reviews of other McDune books, sometimes McDonald's (or Taco Bell, in my case) hits the spot even though you know it's not good. Likewise, the Dune setting itself is so interesting that even a bad book in the Dune universe is interesting enough to hit the spot if you're jonesing for some Dune.
I picked these up because I've always loved the idea in Dune of remaking humanity and pushing the boundaries of what humans can be, an idea developed most clearly by the Bene Gesserit (especially in the later Frank Herbert books), the Mentats, and the Guild Navigators. (See my review of Heretics of Dune for more on this idea). Prequels focused on these schools sounded to me like they might be interesting.
But, being McDune books, I don't feel like I got much of the philosophical background of the schools and their formation, or much of a sense of the characters who created them. ...
A lot of reviewers criticize the characterization in the McDune books, and for good reason. Every character is basically just a motivation that exists solely to conflict with other characters/motivations.
...
It might sound so far like I hated this book, but that's not true. If you can overlook the weaknesses, there's stuff to like. As much as I bemoan the authors' skills and economic incentive, it is obvious they have a lot of love for the universe and that it takes a lot of work to keep everything roughly consistent with Frank Herbert's basic ideas (even if they fumble in their execution). I enjoyed reading about how each school formed, the political intrigue and space battles were usually pretty exciting, and I actually really liked the way it wrapped up the political story in the founding of the Guild. I might go on from here to read Hunters of Dune, having recently re-read the original series.
The Dune universe is strange in that I love it, but I wouldn't want to live there, what with all the monarchic power structures, mass death, and extreme seriousness all the time (all of this is somewhat challenged in the last couple Dune books, especially Chapterhouse: Dune, which is why I love it). I wouldn't want to live there, but I love visiting the Dune universe. And for all their many faults, the McDune books allow me to visit that universe again. Like McDonald's itself, they're not that great, but sometimes they hit the spot.
See a fuller review on Goodreads.
What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula
And now for some non-fiction!
For a long time whenever people ask me for something to read about basic Buddhist ideas, What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula has been the book I've recommended. It's not the most up-to-date scholarship, and Rahula is a bit of a "Protestant Buddhist" (i.e., a movement in the 19-20th centuries to represent Buddhism as more secular, downplaying its religious aspects). But as a bibliophile, some books become friends, and this book is one of my good friends. Rahula explains complex topics of Buddhist philosophy in an elegant, thought-provoking way. The one drawback is that Rahula spends less time than I would like on Buddhist philosophers' arguments in favor of these views, although when it comes to describing the views themselves he is unsurpassed. I've assigned this in several philosophy courses, and if I supplement it with a few arguments from other sources (like Steven Collins's Selfless Persons or Mark Siderits's Buddhism as Philosophy), it does the job admirably.
See my review on Goodreads.
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